1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to associating indexed values generally and more particularly to associating user activity based on overall system activity.
2. Description of Related Art
There is widespread need with large ad networks like Yahoo! to be able to sell targeted advertisement to users. A key component in realizing this vision is the development of technology that enables a system like Yahoo! to capture and utilize the behavioral profile of a user including, for example, associations between user preferences and user activities (e.g. the likelihood for visiting site B based on a visit to site A). Users who opt in and choose to reveal information about their behavior habits tend to generally be the more engaged group of users (e.g., as measured by time logged into the Internet). This biases any learning we get out of such data towards the more engaged set of users who form a small portion of overall traffic. However, application to less engaged (e.g., less frequent) users is not generally covered by analyzing more engaged users.
Thus, there is a need for improved methods to forecast association rules for user activity across user engagement levels.